Dope is a Vicious Circle
by Balin Lord of Moria
Summary: A portrait of the consequences of a drug dealing agent named Donald Colby getting rich off of the sufferings of innocent teenagers in Lytton, as well as his corrupt psyche that made his condemnation so irrevocable.


**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Police Quest_ or it's characters.

* * *

**Dope is a Vicious Circle**

What's the life of a drug dealer like, you might ask?

Believe me, it isn't the kind of job that pays as well as I once thought. Just make the drugs, the grass, the coke, the crack, and sell them to hired punk kids who are willing to sell them to gullible kids desiring a high for a little spending money. Then, you can use the money to buy your own selfish luxuries, like a yacht, some flashy suits, or even a little island.

Jessie Bains once lured me into that world after I did a good job of playing poker with him and his pals, Otto and Gene. It certainly did pay well. But I always had a contingency plan in mind if I was ever caught by the police: to cooperate with the cops and a judge and jury and get off scot-free while Bains took the fall. And guess what happened. An officer named Sonny Bonds and his partner, Laura Watts, catch me making a drug sale in Lytton City Park with Vic Simms, a punk from Jefferson High School, and we're both arrested!

Call me a coward if you want, or a traitor, but what else could I do? As loathe as I am to admit this, I'm not tough enough to handle a long prison sentence, so I _had_ to cooperate, just like Vic who was even weaker than I was. Like Woody Roberts, another of Jessie's employees, I testified in court about Bains' drug dealing activities, and like him, I got a suspended sentence and five years of probation.

I was free from prison and from jail, but I wasn't free to go into an easy money-making business like drug dealing again. I decided I would just have to cooperate with society for the rest of my life. So I started over. I moved to Steelton, NM, not too far from Lytton, CA, my former home, was put under a witness protection program, and started a legitimate business called Colby Imports, where I managed a company that handled the importing of goods from some foreign countries and other parts of America. It was a good, and honest, business, but for some reason, I missed the thrill of selling dope to the gullible. And what's more, when my parents found out that I had dealt in one of America's most heinous crimes, they disowned me.

So my new life is a mixed blessing. It's safe, it pays modestly well, and I can start over with new friends, but I lost my family, my original home town, and my chance at getting my own yacht with little effort. I suppose some Christians might say that I was like Uncle Andrew in _The Chronicles of Narnia_, stuck in a vicious circle of evil lusts and desires, unable ever to redeem himself. But God knows I've done the best I can to become a better person, even if there's a part of me that doesn't want to be. And as more time has passed, I have felt more and more that I made the right decision when I testified against my former boss.

And yet, now, as my former boss, the Death Angel, newly escaped from prison, has evaded my witness protection program and holds a deadly handgun to the back of my head, giving me a twisted eulogy of sorts, now I'm not so sure. And just before he shoots me in the back of the head, ending my life, I can't help but wonder what kind of life I might have lived if I had remained loyal to him, and what kind of yacht I would get, and how big and well-furnished it would be, too. Maybe I would even have gotten a little island, too, like a Tahitian island, or maybe even part of Costa Rica. Then he fires the gun.

And as blackness starts to claim me and I feel myself falling into hell, where Bains will soon be too, I finally realize that by trying to gain the whole world and continuing to desire it even after my cowardly repentance, I had sold my soul to the devil.

But as the anguish begins and never stops for a moment, I know that I realized it far too late.


End file.
